Hoping to pressure the U.N. into abandoning South Korea, Mao Zedong ordered the PVA do a full attack on the southern forces along the 38th parallel destroying several South Korean divisions, and the U.N. forces evacuated Seoul.
With the U.N.'s and PVA's acceptance of India's proposal for an armistice, fighting ended July 27, 1953 and established the Military Demarcation Line, the current DMZ and NLL. South Korea lost chance to unify the peninsula.
President Park Geun-hye and President Xi Jinping of People's Republic of China exchanged many friendly and sweet promising words on the Independence Day of the United States, but they didn't say anything about China's Korean War intervention, one of the major roots of the current division of the Korean Peninsula.
A fad of changing signboards into Chinese characters in Seoul City includes subway stations, restaurants, shopping malls, plastic surgeon's clinics and public toilets.
One of my sons, who has been accepted by a university in the United States asked me, "Dad, am I going in the right direction?" I hope so as I always liked the east direction.
Lee Sam-jin
Seoul